Formatting forms/sbf for maximum friendliness

[BullHalseyUSN]

Guys,

One things that's struck me about access as I've been designing in it is the unwieldiness, in a certain regard, of the subform.

I have a database with tblMember and another tblSchools. To the data entry user, a member's schools are part of one holistic thing we could call the member's record. To a database designer, there are good reasons to split off something like schools attended - normalization and other performance and logical advantages.

The user doesn't need to know that the two elements are from different tables. It seems to me that Access makes it hard to mask this.

What are your techniques to make a subf as "integrated" as possible, please?

TIA

 

[jdgreen]

In the properties field make the following changes:
Record Selectors.........No
Navigation Buttons.......No
Dividing Lines...........No
Auto Resize..............No
Border Style.............None
Control Box..............No
Min Max Buttons..........None
Close Button.............No
As long as the background color is the same the user won't be able to tell it's a different form. In addition I would also disable the Scroll Bars if they aren't needed. At most I only have the vertical one enable when it's a continuous form.

John Green

 

[SeeJane]

Hi -

If you have a 1:1 relationship between members and schools, you could write a SQL statement pulling all the data from the different tables together, and then paste that SQL into the form's Record source (you do need to use the SQL rather than an actual query). You can then design a single form and dispense with subforms altogether. If you have a member with active records for 3 schools (or something along those lines) you'd need to use the subform to display all the schools.

I also like to design my own navigation buttons, that way you could adjust any necessary subforms to fit logically into the whole thing.

Good luck,
CJ

 

[BullHalseyUSN]

Those are both very good thoughts.

I am fairly experienced in databases but still somewhat new to Access. It's an awesome tool and a clever idea but it takes getting used to!